Under Performing To Get Even

I saw an interesting situation today that is probably a common scenario in most businesses. Essentially, in an organization there was this person who used to work really hard and was good at what he did. However, as time went on it seemed like the quality of his work and commitment to the company began to drop. He would then often complain about the most mundane things and generally not taking initiative to make himself better.

Of course during this phase he would always say nothing is wrong. As time went on people were able to get the real truth out of him as he openly admitted that he wasn’t do things as he felt he was unappreciated compared to others. This ended up being pretty costly for the company too as that grudge translated to the person not treating the customers as well too which in hence resulted in less sales.

I think the thing to take away here is you have to find a way to address people like that right away as opposed to hoping the problem will go away on its own. Like in this case it’s not uncommon that people will purposely under perform out of spite to try and make themselves feel better. Usually it can be a little confrontational to have the person in-charge to address it directly and that is when other less senior people in an organization can often be better at getting disgruntled people to say what is really on their mind. I suppose you can say in many ways it feels more like an anonymous survey when people other than the boss starts to ask questions.